To most Christians, Easter marks the most important point in their calendar and as St Paul so aptly put it And if Christ is not risen then our preaching is empty and your faith is in vain [1 Corinthians 15:14] and so I find it ridiculous that one christian apologist says in much ado about resurrection that he for a long time didn’t get why it has to be included in the gospel story though that now he realizes the resurrection was inevitable and had to be included. I don’t know how many Christians feel the same way about the resurrection and if indeed there are who share his predicament, feel free to express it in the comments especially what the resurrection means to you.

To me, the resurrection of Jesus was no more significant than the resurrection of Lazarus. It was just one more miracle. The big deal was the death of Christ, not His resurrection.

To some extent he is true, in the sense that if any of these things happened there is really no difference. We have been told, in theOT, that people were brought back to life, what we are never told is whether after being brought back to life, they die again which then leads me to question the point of bringing them to life in the first place. What was the point in raising Lazarus from his sleep if he was going to die again in a few years? Why not let him rest. The story of the resurrection is told differently in the gospels. Mathew talks about a violent earthquake, he seems to be the only one aware of the earthquake and he further tells us Jesus met the women, he even says the stone wasn’t rolled when the women showed up; Mark tells us they were three women[not a significant difference though but who do we believe], he says the stone was rolled and a young man was sitting by the right side; Luke tells us the women were wandering in the tomb then two men appeared and for good measure let us hear John who says the women did not go in neither did she talk with anyone one. She just ran away. When the apologist finishes reading the three versions, I will wait to be told the correct one and how he got to that conclusion.

There is little evidence to prove that Christ existed and even if he did how could the death of one man atone for sins committed and those yet to be committed?

We have been told Christ suffering is significant and oft-times you hear a person suffering being told that Jesus also suffered and they should bear theirs with courage. I got a few reflections on the matter. If Jesus was truly god, and god is passionless, unchanging, all-knowing and whatever quality the theist want to give god, he doesn’t know what it means to suffer. I agree to be nailed to a cross is a horrible way to die but here we have god on the cross, nothing could have been too much for god and he died the same day anyway. There are many people whose lives are a series of intense pain, untold suffering that what Jesus, if he existed, went through can all pale in comparison. To tell such a person to take comfort in Jesus’ suffering is to not understand human suffering.

Because of the resurrection, the grave is a passageway to eternal life!

I think anyone who believes in another life apart from this cannot live fully here and now. To them this life is but a preparation for a future life. How I find this to be really sad.

I think Nietzsche said it best, when he wrote in Human, all too Human

When on a Sunday morning we hear the bells ringing, we ask ourselves: it is possible! This is going on because of a Jew crucified 2,000 years ago who said he was the son of God. The proof of such an assertion is lacking. In the context of our age the Christian religion is certainly a piece of antiquity intruding out of distant ages past, and that the above-mentioned assertion is believed is perhaps the most ancient piece of the inheritance. A god who begets children on a mortal woman; a sage who calls upon us no longer to work, no longer to sit in judgment, but to heed the signs of the imminent end of the world; a justice which accepts an innocent man as a substitute sacrifice; someone who bids his disciples drink his blood; prayers for miraculous interventions; sins perpetrated against a god atoned for by a god; fear of a Beyond to which death is the gateway; the figure of the Cross as a symbol in an age which no longer knows the meaning and shame of the Cross — how gruesomely all this is wafted to us, as if out of the grave of a primeval past! Can one believe that things of this sort are still believed in?

It must have been Nietzsche who said the now immortal words that One had better put on gloves before handling the New Testament. The presence of so much filth makes it highly advisable.I don’t know whether he read the Koran or he found so revolting that he gave it a wide berth.

I think the Koran and some Muslims are so depraved that even using gloves to touch the Koran would not free one from contamination. It is recommended therefore that, we allow their women to wear tents but we advice each and every Muslim to burn the copies of hadiths and Koran in their possession. We admit Christianity is awful but this is beyond absurd

I know some of you know the grand Ayatollah Ruhollah Khomeini remembered infamously for issuing a fatwa against Salman Rushdie for his book Satanic Verses[pdf], a fatwa that is still in place because the damn bastard died before he revoked it and no one else can revoke it.

What you don’t know is the said Ayatollah found no qualms in telling people they can have sex with cows, hens and anything you can tame

A man can have sex with animals such as sheep, cows, camels and so on. However, he should kill the animal after he has his orgasm. He should not sell the meat to the people in his own village, but selling the meat to a neighbouring village is reasonable.

I will start by apologizing to ladysighs who was the donor and not Meme and hope that I will be promptly forgiven :-D.

I haven’t bothered to check with Mo or Jeebus on goldfish, I highly doubt with their obsession with blood, war and sacrifices and in the case of Mo flights on a Pegasus, I doubt they could have time for such beautiful creatures.

What would we do with a memory that lasts three months? For starters, I don’t think we would be superstitious. A guy dies and after three months we have forgotten they existed that is hoping we didn’t take photos with them.

I would get lost trying to trace my upcountry home [I take more than three months before I travel down].

Imagine every three months being introduced to your parents and vice versa. One could just insist on a new pair of parents if for a given reason you didn’t like your parents.

Then a man after three months forgetting he already made his wife pregnant and then inquiring to know who is the father? I think this would be devastating to most especially if the wife is to say I can’t remember.

As an equal opportunity basher, I wish the Christians a happy moment as they take time this weekend to celebrate the greatest metaphor of all time, that is the suicide of god to save humanity from god for sins that Adam and Eve who didn’t exist committed!

The Koran seems to be silent on silence and the few places where it does talk about silence, it is asking that you be silent. This though shouldn’t worry us, there is a lot on silence we will talk about.

I guess we are a bit lucky, we have 3 mentions of silence or synonyms

And [mention, O Muhammad], when We directed to you a few of the jinn, listening to the Qur’an. And when they attended it, they said, “Listen quietly.” And when it was concluded, they went back to their people as warners.

The people who wrote the Koran believed in superstition. They believed as you can see in the above recitation one who believes in the existence of jinns. It is such kind of little things that help to show that the Koran just like the Torah and Bible originated from a very superstitious and ignorant era.

And if you [believers] invite them to guidance, they will not follow you. It is all the same for you whether you invite them or you are silent.

How wonderful would it be if the faithful followed this advice to just let those who don’t believe be? In Egypt a young Atheist is in jail for posting the stupid movie on Mo that led to the killing of the US ambassador to Libya.

So when the Qur’an is recited, then listen to it and pay attention that you may receive mercy.

This is the last mention of silence I got from the good book and I hope the Muslims follow this command as am sure they must. It really is a funny site passing by a mosque with all the asses facing one direction and all heads facing Mecca. I don’t think there is a rule they don’t follow.

I have been asking myself whether it is by design that the so called holy books are silent on the personages of their most important characters. The Koran tells us almost very little about Mo so much such that we can’t tell whether he was what we are told he was. The biography of Mo that we have is gleaned from hadiths that were written years after he supposedly lived. The Muslims believe the hadiths were composed following a very strict evidential procedure and to back them up they say Bukhari received over 600K collections and only found 7K to be authentic. It is from these that the life, exploits and teaching of the prophet is told. In future posts I will enlighten you on the evidential procedure employed by Bukhari in his momentous task.

Christians don’t fare any better on the question of silence. We are told when Jesus is born, the next time he is 12 and the next time we meet him he is 30. We have been told he died at age 33[I could be wrong] but my friends read any one of the gospels and try and trace his life from the time he is 30 to his suicide and we have a problem of arithmetic. Let me demonstrate; his first miracle is getting people drunk then follows a few sermons in random places, a few parables and then 40 day temptation, entry into Jerusalem, betrayal by Judas[I thought Jeebus was famous and known by every Tom Dick and Harry], suicide and resurrection. Unless this fellow used to preach once every 3 months, I think we will be at pains demonstrating that his mission lasted 3 years.

Something bothers me on this matter of silence too. If god is responsible for creating man, that is, male and female, did he consider half the human population so inappropriate to reveal his teachings to? This situation that has resulted in all the Abrahamic religions treating women as less equal to men whose only duty is to act as incubators. I need to know why the good books are silent on women and when they are talked about they are so demonized!

Am waiting for any christian or Muslim to give me a bio of their supposed prophets.

That my friends is all on silence, we will in future attempt to write on GOLDFISH

First, to explain the genesis of this title, it is a free donation from my friend Meme.

Since this week we are dedicating to Islam, the Koran has a surah Ar -Rad[Thunder] from which we will see what Mo was told about things that will affect future generations.

Before I continue with this I have a few declarations to make. I haven’t read the whole Koran and it is not anywhere in my reading list and therefore anyone versed in the Koran can correct me where am wrong.

Two, I consider Islam to be a danger to the society; one in the way it treats women, their disdain for science [books on evolution were burned in Turkey towards the end of last year. A relevant post can be found in why evolution is true], their treatment of people of other faiths in their midst especially in countries that are mainly Muslim and lastly the desire by a small minority to resort to violence whenever their religion is questioned.

Muslims are mainly fundamentalist to the core. I don’t know whether it is by training, that they are taught to not read anything by non Muslims. In this sense, they think that only an exposition on Islam written by a Muslim should be read and to boot it would be better if it is written in Arabic. I got news for you. I don’t care for your apologists. I will read whatever I want written on Islam by whoever writes it. And I will use an English translation of the Koran for my purposes. You can insist all you want that a Koran to be so valid has to be in Arabic. Is your god unable to communicate in another language or Arabic a language spoken by just is a portion of the world population his lingua franca?

Lastly, until the Muslim just like the Judaist or the Christian can define a coherent god and then prove that this god exists, don’t tell me the Koran was revealed. Use another word but I prefer plagiarized or copied for my purposes. Having laid the ground rules we can now have a bit of fun

For each one are successive [angels] before and behind him who protect him by the decree of Allah . Indeed, Allah will not change the condition of a people until they change what is in themselves. And when Allah intends for a people ill, there is no repelling it. And there is not for them besides Him any patron.

We have been discussing the problem of evil in some previous posts and just as I indicated in the bible, here too we have the author telling us when Allah intends ill there is no escaping. I called the christian god a fiend and a cruel bastard, cruel still is Allah. No invoking human free will as a reason for existence of evil.

It is He who shows you lightning, [causing] fear and aspiration, and generates the heavy clouds.

Now you know when you see clouds who has generated them. Forget cooling and condensation of air as it rises and when you see lightening forget meeting of charges, nothing like that, it’s Allah announcing his presence.

And the thunder exalts [ Allah ] with praise of Him – and the angels [as well] from fear of Him – and He sends thunderbolts and strikes therewith whom He wills while they dispute about Allah ; and He is severe in assault.

Next time don’t hide under your table when the thunder is so loud, it is bowing to Allah. What I don’t know is whether it’s face also looks to Mecca and the ass to everywhere else in this supplication?

But those who break the covenant of Allah after contracting it and sever that which Allah has ordered to be joined and spread corruption on earth – for them is the curse, and they will have the worst home.

If this home is what I think it is, then this god is no different from his counterpart worshiped by the Christians who creates hell for his children he so dearly loves!

And if there was any qur’an by which the mountains would be removed or the earth would be broken apart or the dead would be made to speak, [it would be this Qur’an], but to Allah belongs the affair entirely. Then have those who believed not accepted that had Allah willed, He would have guided the people, all of them? And those who disbelieve do not cease to be struck, for what they have done, by calamity – or it will descend near their home – until there comes the promise of Allah . Indeed, Allah does not fail in [His] promise.

I haven’t tried trying to move mountains with anything since I don’t own an earth mover but am hoping one of our Muslim brothers with the Koran[the Arabic version] should try this and report back to us. I would like to use it some other time to bring the office closer to my house, I really need to sleep more.

The example of Paradise, which the righteous have been promised, is [that] beneath it rivers flow. Its fruit is lasting, and its shade. That is the consequence for the righteous, and the consequence for the disbelievers is the Fire.

Paradise must have been more like the Euphrates and Tigris, the area around Mesopotamia, a truly agricultural town.

And those who have disbelieved say, “You are not a messenger.” Say, [O Muhammad], “Sufficient is Allah as Witness between me and you, and [the witness of] whoever has knowledge of the Scripture.”

As I have said elsewhere, a thing is only defended when it is contested. Unless the person doing the revelation is talking about a distant time, this need not be said.

Our next post will be on silence and I hope the Koran has something on it 😀

Folks, this week our christian friends are preparing to celebrate a pagan holiday which for them represents the very foundation of their belief and which if the guy existed can only be suicide by centurion. Today we will give them a break, we will be dealing with their cousins,[ who by the way think Christians got it all wrong somewhere] the muslims. They will for this week whenever possible be the brunt of jokes, criticism and anything that can be hurled their way.

To start as off, why do Muslims insist on their women wearing tents? How do they see where they are going to and how do they run in the event they need to?

This is what it means to wear a tent. How do you even know your relative if you were not in the house when she was leaving?

and why then not be fair to all. If it is tents, then it should be tents all the way, not this

why this discrimination?

I know if any of them come here they will tell me oh the prophet said this or that about dressing. Please I don’t want to hear those lines. The prophet if he existed is dead he can’t be ruling women from the grave.

You are aware there are close to a billion followers of this cult and they all believe the Koran to be the ultimate in literature and it is only koran if it is in Arabic. I don’t care for Arabic and am not interested in knowing and so we can for our purposes use an English translation to just see how marvelous the said book is, shall we?

We will be looking at 2 Al-Baqara [286]

8

And of mankind, there are some (hypocrites) who say: “We believe in Allah and the Last Day” while in fact they believe not.

9 They (think to) deceive Allah and those who believe, while they only deceive themselves, and perceive (it) not!

10 In their hearts is a disease (of doubt and hypocrisy) and Allah has increased their disease. A painful torment is theirs because they used to tell lies.

11 And when it is said to them: “Make not mischief on the earth,” they say: “We are only peace-makers.”

12 Verily! They are the ones who make mischief, but they perceive not.

13 And when it is said to them (hypocrites): “Believe as the people (followers of Muhammad صلى الله عليه وسلم, Al-Ansar and Al-Muhajirun) have believed,” they say: “Shall we believe as the fools have believed?” Verily, they are the fools, but they know not.

14 And when they meet those who believe, they say: “We believe,” but when they are alone with their Shayatin (devils – polytheists, hypocrites), they say: “Truly, we are with you; verily, we were but mocking.”

15 Allah mocks at them and gives them increase in their wrong-doing to wander blindly.

Maybe I don’t know good prose, but please tell me where such a composition it can be so-called is glorious? Where is this better than the opening paragraph to a Tale of Two Cities or two any narration in Brothers Karamazov or Lolita?

Then the ultimate challenge

23 And if you (Arab pagans, Jews, and Christians) are in doubt concerning that which We have sent down (i.e. the Qur’an) to Our slave (Muhammad صلى الله عليه وسلم), then produce a Surah (chapter) of the like thereof and call your witnesses (supporters and helpers) besides Allah, if you are truthful.

and then the most able response, by Al Razi[865-925 CE], I have come across

You claim that the evidentiary miracle is present and available, namely, the Koran. You say: “Whoever denies it, let him produce a similar one.” Indeed, we shall produce a thousand similar, from the works of rhetoricians, eloquent speakers and valiant poets, which are more appropriately phrased and state the issues more succinctly. They convey the meaning better and their rhymed prose is in better meter. , By God what you say astonishes us! You are talking about a work which recounts ancient myths, and which at the same time is full of contradictions and does not contain any useful information or explanation. Then you say: “Produce something like it”?!

It gets more ridiculous

31 And He taught Adam all the names (of everything) , then He showed them to the angels and said, “Tell Me the names of these if you are truthful.”

In Genesis Chapter 2, the second creation story, the animals are made to do a match by as Adam names them. How this story is so different, I hope some random muslim will enlighten us.

34 And (remember) when We said to the angels: “Prostrate yourselves before Adam.”. And they prostrated except Iblis (Satan), he refused and was proud and was one of the disbelievers (disobedient to Allah).

Friends, tell me how is this useful information?

And if this is not plagiarism, then for the life of me I don’t know what is

49 And (remember) when We delivered you from Fir’aun’s (Pharaoh) people, who were afflicting you with a horrible torment, killing your sons and sparing your women, and therein was a mighty trial from your Lord.

At least this god doesn’t claim omnipresence. He is a unidirectional god no wonder all heads face Mecca and all asses elsewhere

149 And from wheresoever you start forth (for prayers), turn your face in the direction of Al-Masjid-Al-Haram (at Makkah), that is indeed the truth from your Lord. And Allah is not unaware of what you do.

"If I had a world of my own, everything would be nonsense. Nothing would be what it is, because everything would be what it isn't. And contrary wise, what is, it wouldn't be. And what it wouldn't be, it would. You see?” Lewis Carroll